A Single Thread
by Lady of the Sith
Summary: OT AU: Leia finds herself torn between two loyalties, between the Sith Lord father she isn't supposed to know and the young Jedi brother who doesn't even know who she is
1. Prologue

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Prologue**

The door slid open with a low hiss, and a shadow fell across the floor. 

Stepping into the holding cell, Darth Vader glanced at the young woman curled up on the durasteel bench along the back wall of the small, dark room, even as she drew herself up tall and lifted her chin defiantly, as if daring him to do his worst.

It was lucky for her that she would never personally know just how bad his worst could truly be.

Dark eyes glared at him, full of steel and fire, and strength that most would find strangely out of place in a woman-a girl, really, hardly more than a child-of such petite build. She was slender and lean, that much was obvious even with the loose white gown she wore, and at full height, she wouldn't even reach his shoulders, but somehow she still managed to carry about her an air of importance and dignity.

And there was more courage in her fierce gaze than he'd encountered in most officers in the Imperial forces.

But that was to be expected, of course, for she was no ordinary girl.

No, there was nothing ordinary about her in the least.

Wordlessly, he gestured to the stormtroopers waiting outside in the corridor of the detention center, and a low, ominous hum filled the air as the interrogation droid hovered into the room. The dark metal sphere was, perhaps, as frightening a sight to behold as Vader himself, with a farrago of metal arms protruding from its sides, a multitude of delicate and deadly instruments on the ends.

As the interrogation droid made its way forward, the loud humming now reverberating throughout the room, even drowning out the noise from his respirator, the girl pressed herself back against the wall, as if trying to push her way right through it to escape the monstrosity approaching.

"Now, Senator," Darth Vader rumbled from where he stood on the other side of the room. "We will discuss the location of the Rebel base."

With that, the thick, heavy soundproof door slid closed behind him, leaving him and the princess alone with the interrogation droid.

For a long moment, the two stared at one another.

And then Vader made another gesture with his gloved hand, this time turning off the interrogation droid with a flick of the Force, and the humming died out as the droid fell still, suspended in midair and silent.

"That was quite the performance earlier, Princess," Vader observed evenly.

With the door securely shut behind him, Leia Organa relaxed, her posture immediately changing from that of a cowering prisoner to a young woman completely at ease. "It was, wasn't it?" she agreed wryly. "Wynssa Starflare has nothing on me. Maybe I should think about a career change and go into holofilms. What do you think?" 

"I think," Vader said slowly. "That it is bad enough you chose to be a politician."

"Says the man who married one," Leia snorted in an unladylike manner. 

Beneath the mask, Vader's lips twitched of their own accord, despite the ache in his heart at the mention of his departed wife, whose memory was never far from his thoughts whenever Leia was near. "I will admit that you do have a certain dramatic flare," he replied flatly. "For instance... spitting on my helmet?" 

Leia had the grace to look ashamed. "I got a bit carried away?" she offered sheepishly.

"An excuse I have heard you use on many occasions," Vader retorted sarcastically, but not without a hint of exasperated amusement. "Including, if memory serves me right, on your thirteenth birthday, when Bail Organa brought you along on one of his senatorial trips to Coruscant and you stole an Imperial speeder for a joyride, only to wreck it in the Industrial Sector."

"Oh, like you've never wrecked a speeder before," Leia declared, miffed, and lifted her chin in a manner that was entirely her mother, right now to the affronted sniff.

"If I have," Vader said smoothly. "The error was never on my part."

"Of course not," Leia muttered, rolling her eyes.

While it was true that the young princess took after her mother almost exclusively in appearance, with a few minor exceptions around the nose and mouth that he suspected could be attributed to the man he had once been, there was no denying that she had inherited a great deal of her father's temperament.

Right down to that unfaltering stubborn streak.

Sometimes, Vader wondered how Bail Organa had put up with it all these years, and he amused himself to imagine the head of the Organa House pulling out his hair at wit's end with the child he had taken in to raise in secrecy.

At one point, when he had first discovered the truth of Leia's parentage, Vader had entertained much more cruel and vindictive forms of torture for the man to endure, but they had passed in time. After all, someone had to care for Leia during her youth, and as much as Vader might have liked to have the child with him, it would not have been wise to take her from her foster family.

Doing so would have forced him to show his hand to the Emperor.

So he had allowed Organa to continue raising a child that was not his own, a child that was all that remained of a great and forbidden love that led a Jedi Padawan to defy an entire Order and wed a senator who had once been a queen. He had no concerns as to Organa's fitness to raise his daughter, he knew the man well enough from the Clone Wars to know he was a good man and, he admitted to himself, if Obi-Wan had trusted Organa enough to send the child to him, then Organa would care for her as if she were his own.

Leia was safer on Alderaan, where his enemies, the Emperor included, would never know her true identity.

Hiding the secret he'd learned was easier, he suspected, than it had been for Organa and Kenobi to hide it in the first place, but in the fourteen years since he'd first discovered, quite by accident, that Leia was his daughter, Vader had managed to keep the entire galaxy in the dark.

"I'm sorry I spit on your helmet, Father." 

Except for Leia, of course.

"There is no need for an apology," Vader responded begrudgingly. "I told you to make it convincing, and you did. We will chalk it up to overzealousness on your part."

Leia favored him with a smile, and something inside of him tightened and shifted unpleasantly, as it always did when she smiled like that.

Perhaps it was simply that it reminded him too much of her mother.

Wishing to avoid the melancholy that inevitably accompanied thoughts of his wife, and the lingering pain that it caused to stir inside of his dull, hollow heart, Vader looked away from their daughter, focusing instead on the dormant form of the interrogation droid.

"Were the battlestation plans in the escape pod?" he inquired gruffly. 

"Of course," Leia replied indignantly, and he thought he detected a hint of hurt in her voice. "I wouldn't fail you, Father, you know that."

Yes, he did know that, she had proven it countless times, and her devotion to him had never been in question. She had accepted him from the start, from the very day that the towering Sith Lord had bent down in a garden outside of the Alderaanian palace to share with her a special secret that was just for the two of them, one she could never reveal to anyone, not even Organa or her handmaidens.

And she had kept that secret, and many others that he had entrusted her with over the years. 

"Threepio and Artoo should be on Tatooine by now," Leia continued, more calmly. "I put the plans inside of Artoo, along with a recorded holo for Obi-Wan asking for his help, just as you instructed."

"Very good," Vader murmured, and allowed his pleased satisfaction to slip past his meticulous shields for her to sense, in place of a smile that she would not be able to see in the first place. "You have done well, Leia. I am proud of you."

"Thank you, Father," Leia replied.

He did not need to look back at her to know that she was smiling again.

"Everything is falling into place," Vader told his daughter with a low chuckle, folding his hands behind his back and turning to face her. "Soon Obi-Wan will come to us."

A faint, cool smile tugged its way onto the scarred lips beneath his mask.

"The time to put our plans into action has finally arrived."


	2. Act I

A Single Thread 

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act I**

Something was wrong.

Every nerve in her body was alert, tingling with warning.

Not for the first time, Leia Organa wished that she was better trained in the Force, so that she could figure out what was going on, what the quiet whisper of dread in her stomach was trying to tell her.

As it was, all the Force was showing her right now was that something bad was going to happen.

With the stormtroopers leading her to the bridge of the Death Star two steps ahead of her, unconcerned with her now that her hands were bound with stuncuffs, Leia glanced back at the towering, ominous form of Darth Vader as the Sith Lord trailed along behind her.

Her father did not meet her gaze, and that more than anything caused her stomach to knot.

Through the Force, she could feel his resigned wariness, his anxiety and agitation, and she knew that he was not happy about whatever was about to happen.

More importantly, though, he knew that she was not going to be happy. 

_Father?_ she reached out to him worriedly.

He did not answer, and he purposefully kept his mask trained on the doors to the bridge ahead as they slid open, so that he would not have to look at her.

Now more than ever, Leia felt dread settle in her chest.

The stormtroopers led her forward into the bridge, and she shifted her attention to the tall, slender man in the center of the bridge, dressed in a sleek gray uniform that somehow managed to make his sunken face appear even more like a living skull than usual.

"Governor Tarkin," she sneered as she was brought before him. "I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought onboard."

Coming to a halt just behind her, Vader moved his hand to rest on his belt and it brushed against the small of Leia's back, even through the material of her white gown, strangely warm considering that she knew it to be an artificial hand. He had lost the real one a lifetime ago, before she was even born, at the start of the Clone Wars, back when he had been a young Jedi Padawan.

"Charming to the last," Tarkin observed, and his tone made it clear that he was anything but charmed as he lifted a hand to clasp her chin between his thumb and forefinger, his touch sending a shudder of revulsion through Leia's entire body and causing her father to bristle behind her. "You don't know how hard I found it signing the order to terminate your life."

"I'm surprised you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself!" Leia spat, jerking her chin away. 

"Princess Leia, before your execution I would like you to be my guest at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational," Tarkin informed her coolly. "No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now."

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin," Leia retorted. "The more star systems will slip through your fingers."

"Not after we demonstrate the power of this station," Tarkin responded smugly, and lifted a finger, snide amusement dripping off of him in the Force. "In a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that'll be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the Rebel base, I have chosen to test this station's destructive power... on your home planet of Alderaan." 

The air was knocked out of her, as if she'd just been struck in the stomach.

"No!" Leia cried in horror. "Alderaan is peaceful, we have no weapons. You can't possibly-" 

"You would prefer another target?" Tarkin cut her off coldly, and she suddenly found it hard to breathe. "A military target? Then name the system!"

Swallowing hard, Leia remained silent.

"I grow tired of asking this," Tarkin growled, and moved toward her threateningly, causing her to back up into the hard chestplate of Darth Vader, who had neither moved nor spoken since their arrival on the bridge. Leia felt the urge to press herself closer against her father, to bury herself in him, as Tarkin loomed over her menacingly. "So it'll be the last time. Where is the Rebel base?"

Distantly, Leia was aware of a hidden speaker announcing they had reached Alderaan, but she only half-heard it. Her mind was in chaos, a frantic frenzy of dread and fear clouding her thoughts, and she might very well have failed to answer him at all had it not been for her father's cool, calming touch on her mind through the Force.

"Dantooine," she whispered, almost before she knew she was going to, and then she lowered her head in seeming defeat. "They're on Dantooine." 

"There," Tarkin said, and he smiled almost pleasantly, but with a sinister edge. "You see Lord Vader, she can be reasonable."

Thanks to her father's touch, Leia was now able to breathe regularly again, and her shoulders slumped, not in defeat but with relief, until she realized that her father had only grown even more tense at Tarkin's words.

Looking to a man in Admiral's clothing, Tarkin nodded. "Continue with the operation," he ordered. "You may fire when ready." 

"What?" Leia yelped, her heart wrenching.

"You're far too trusting," Tarkin informed her with amusement. "Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration. But don't worry, we will deal with your Rebel friends soon enough." 

"No!" Leia cried desperately, lunging for him, but her father's massive hand fell on her shoulder, restraining her and pulling her back to him

_Leia,_ her father's 'voice' filled her head, even as she struggled against him, with him only holding her all the tighter against his chest. _Leia..._

Do something, Leia pleaded, not so much with words as with emotion, her fear and terror mixing with a spike of the grief she knew was to come. She craned her neck around to look up at the mask which she had come to know every detail of as a child, a mask which comforted her and her alone. _Father, please! You have to do something!_

Even as she begged, though, she knew that nothing could stop what was about to take place.

The Force was already in mourning.

_I cannot, _Vader told her gently, and it might have been wishful thinking, but she thought she detected a trace of weary remorse beneath his grim countenance.

"Keep your eyes open, Princess Leia," Tarkin chuckled. "I wouldn't want you to miss the view."

Oh, how she ached to wrap her hands around that man's neck, to choke the life from him slowly and painfully for what he was about to do to her beloved Alderaan. Suddenly she wished, with a fierceness that made her blood run hot, that her father had instructed her in the deadly ways of the Force that he himself practiced, instead of just the basic use of the Force.

Because if she'd been able to, she would have crushed Tarkin's throat herself.

All those people... all those innocent, wonderful, beautiful people...

And Bail.

Kind, compassionate, loving Bail who had taken her into his home and raised her, who had loved her and whom she had loved in return. Her foster family was down there in Aldera, blissfully unaware of what fate was about to befall them, and she could do nothing to help them, nothing to save them.

She tried to look away, she really did. Her mind told her to turn away, to bury her face in her father's armor, regardless of who might see or what it might reveal, but her body just would not listen.

A single moment of stillness fell over her, and over the galaxy it seemed, the calm before the storm.

Then a wave of emotion slammed into her- cold, hard and filled with terror. The pain was worse than anything she had ever felt, worse than the time she had broken her leg trying to scale the side of the palace in Aldera, worse than the nights she had awoken with nightmares of her mother's death. Mixed with the terror and pain was the shock of betrayal, a betrayal felt by millions of minds all at once, and a cold unlike anything she had ever known, a cold that seeped right into the very core of her being.

Leia wobbled on her feet, tears searing down her cheeks as she wailed along with the people of Alderaan.

Through the thick haze of screaming voices, she felt her father's hand tighten on her shoulder, felt him giving her some of his strength even as his own presence staggered internally under the onslaught of the Force.

And then, as suddenly as they had awakened in her chest, the voices died out. 

Alderaan was gone.

Alderaan, with its graceful cities and rolling hills, with it's peaceful people who had only a moment to realize their end was upon them.

Gone, in the space of a moment.


	3. Act II

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act II**

It was not often that a Sith Lord hesitated.

Hesitation was a sign of weakness, and one that scavengers in the Empire eagerly took advantage of.

Once, a lifetime ago, he would have been praised for hesitating, for once, instead of just rushing into a situation without stopping to think. Obi-Wan had always called him reckless, but Darth Vader suspected that was simply because Kenobi had never had to deal with a temperamental daughter who was strong in the Force.

Leia brought new meaning to the word reckless, and more than once Vader had expected his suit to fail him after one of her dangerous stunts.

If this was how Kenobi had felt all those years ago, no wonder his former Master had begun to go gray so young.

At the moment, he found himself standing outside of the door to his daughter's detention cell, where Tarkin had sent her with stormtrooper escort after the destruction of Alderaan.

On the other side of the thick door, he could feel Leia's hurt.

Her sobs had long since died out, all the while that he'd stood on the bridge with Tarkin and Motti, her grief had cried out to him through the Force, and his heart had ached dully for her. He knew all too well, if he allowed himself to venture into the past that was forbidden to him now, the pain of loss, for he had suffered it many times in his life, over and over again without fail.

If he could have spared her this agony, he would have gladly done so.

_There is no point in dwelling on what ifs or what might have been,_ an inner voice, which sounds suspiciously like his former Master, chided him. _You must focus on what is._

Grunting, Vader gave a faint gesture with his hand, and the heavy door slid open.

There was no need for Leia to pretend to be devastated for the benefit of the stormtroopers who waited in the dimly lit corridor of the detention center, the despair was all too real. She sat curled up on the durasteel bench, legs drawn up to her chest and head lolled to the side, staring at nothing.

Vader stared at her for a long moment, and his containment suit must have suffered a momentary glitch, because his lungs stopped working briefly.

The door slid closed behind him with a hiss, but Leia did not look up, and Vader was surprised to realize just how small she truly appeared within the dark, foreboding durasteel cell. It was regrettable that she had to remain in the detention center cell for appearance's sake, rather than being allowed to stay in his quarters where she would be more comfortable, but he knew that she was more than capable of enduring the cramped durasteel quarters for as long as necessary.

After all, it was vital that she keep up the facade of a Rebel prisoner.

Of course, it wasn't entirely an act, Leia truly was a member of the Rebellion, at least as far as the Rebellion's leaders knew. It was all part of the plan, it had been from the start, and had proven more useful than he could have dared to hope all those years ago when Leia had first joined the Senate as the junior senator from Alderaan. In truth, Vader knew that his daughter sympathized with the Rebels, that her efforts to help further their movement went beyond just doing what was necessary to maintain her cover, but he turned a blind eye to it.

He wasn't certain why he made such indulgent allowances, but it did not matter in the end.

The time was fast approaching for Palpatine to meet his end, and once the Emperor was disposed, it would be Leia who brought the galaxy back into order and cleansed the Empire of its decaying limbs, so if she had supporters amongst the Rebel forces, all the better.

She would make an impressive Empress one day.

Her mother would have been proud.

"You could have done something," she whispered, and even though her voice was muffled, he distinctly heard it quiver.

"I could not have," Vader replied truthfully. "Not without jeopardizing everything we have worked for."

"You mean everything you've worked for, don't you?" Leia retorted bitterly, raising her head.

"Everything I have done is for you," Vader insisted firmly. "You know this, Leia. When Palpatine is dead, this Empire will be yours to run, as you see fit."

"Then why couldn't you just kill Tarkin before he blew up Alderaan and get on with killing the Emperor?" Leia asked him tearfully, looking at him with wide brown eyes, full of pain and hurt.

Her mother's eyes.

"You know why," Vader told her with quiet patience. "The time is not right for us to act."

"Alderaan is gone, Father!" Leia cried, voice thick with emotion as tears threatened to spill from her eyes. "They destroyed my homeworld in the blink of an eye! How is this not the right time for us to act?"

Vader sighed heavily and came to sit on the durasteel bench beside her. She did not move away from him, but neither did she draw closer, as she had the inexplicable habit of doing whenever they were alone. "Leia," he rumbled softly, and for the first time in many years, he felt every one of his years, throughout his entire body. Or what passed for a body, anyway. "I am not as strong nor as powerful as I once was, my injuries have weakened me."

It was a great cost for him to admit that aloud, when he had spent so long trying to deny it to himself.

Across Leia's face, he saw a frown starting to blossom, one of concern and pity, and he quickly pushed on, wishing to remove that look at once.

"We must bide our time until the moment is right," he told her solemnly, gazing directly into her dark eyes, eyes so familiar that they still, after all these years, caused a small ache somewhere deep inside of him. "If I had stopped Tarkin from destroying Alderaan, our hand would have been revealed to the Emperor, and all would have been lost."

"I know," Leia murmured, and he sensed that she did know, but cold knowledge did little to soothe her wounded spirit or nurse her broken heart.

"I am sorry for the loss of your people," Vader assured her quietly, and lifted a gloved hand to touch her cheek briefly, a touch which she instinctively leaned into. "I know that Alderaan was dear to you, just as I know that Organa was dear to you."

His daughter's eyes fell closed, and a single tear slipped past her eyelashes to slide down her cheek.

"He was a good man," Vader said begrudgingly, wiping the tear with his thumb and then letting his hand fall to his side once more. "And he took good care of you, for which I am most grateful."

"I hate him," Leia whispered, and Vader did not need clarification on who she meant. "My whole world, my people, my friends, the Organas... he murdered them all, without even blinking an eye."

"I promise you, Leia, Tarkin will pay," Vader vowed lowly, cold steel forging in his chest at the thought of the man who had caused his only child, the last gift that his wife had given him, so much pain. "When the time is right, he will pay for what he has taken from you."

Tearfully, Leia nodded, and swallowed hard before opening her eyes. "Have the scouts returned from Dantooine yet?" she asked, and he permitted the change of subject, understanding that it would take time for her wounds to heal.

Some of his never had.

"Yes," he confirmed evenly. "Tarkin was most displeased to find that there were no Rebels there to be dealt with."

"Too bad the disappointment didn't kill him," Leia seethed.

"He has ordered you to be terminated," Vader informed her, and imagined she would have been pleased to learn that he'd felt the urge to choke the Governor himself at the decree.

"Not very original, is he?" Leia scoffed, indifferent to the news and not concerned by it in the least as she fixed him with a steady, trusting gaze. "So how are you going to get me out of this one?"

Vader rose to his feet in a smooth movement. "I am not," he replied calmly.

"What?" Leia demanded, and her composure faltered as her eyes went wide with alarm.

"There is no need for me to do anything," Vader explained gently. "Obi-Wan will do it for me. The old fool will come to rescue you, and I will ensure that you conveniently manage to escape the Death Star and return to the Rebellion."

"And what if Kenobi doesn't come?" Leia pressed anxiously.

"He will come," Vader responded without hesitation. "Rest assured, Leia, Obi-Wan will come for you. He will find a way to rescue you, no matter what it takes."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because," Vader answered, with a slight grimace beneath the mask. "You are the daughter of his only apprentice."

"It's that simple, is it?" Leia muttered skeptically.

"Yes," Vader assured her flatly. "It is that simple."

Leia looked at him for a long moment, and he knew she was itching to ask questions, but he had been more than fair in sharing details of the life that was no longer his over the years, and she knew better than to press for more, particularly on the subject of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"I hope you're right," she sighed instead. "Because if he doesn't show, I'll be forced to use the Force to knock out one of the stormtroopers posted outside of my cell and don his armor to escape on my own."

"I sincerely hope it does not come to that," Vader retorted dryly. "Because you would never be able to pull it off."

"Oh, really?" Leia challenged, chin rising in regal defiance that she had gotten entirely from her mother, with some of his own stubbornness thrown in for good measure.

"Yes," Vader replied in amusement. "Really."

"And why is that?" Leia demanded.

Leia who had never liked to be told to act like a lady or behave like a princess, who had bristled when she was little and told by sons of Alderaanian nobles that she couldn't do something because she was small or female.

She was her father's daughter, as much as she had the look of her mother.

"Because, little one," Vader said, allowing himself a smile behind the mask. "You are entirely too short to be a stormtrooper."

Startled, Leia blinked at him, and then she did something that no one else in the entire galaxy would have ever had the courage to do.

And stuck her tongue out at the Sith Lord.


	4. Act III

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act III**

Patience, according to her father, was a virtue.

Unfortunately, Leia Organa had very little of it, and it was showing.

With great effort, she stopped her pacing and purposefully sat down on the durasteel bench inside of her small, dimly lit cell in the detention center of the Death Star.

_Kenobi better get here soon,_ she thought irritably.

It was a good thing that her father's attention was currently focused elsewhere, probably reminding himself for the hundredth time in an hour that he couldn't afford to just kill Tarkin yet, because she didn't want him knowing she didn't have as much faith in his old Master as he did.

Which, she was well aware, was entirely too ironic.

Darth Vader trusted that Obi-Wan Kenobi would show, to rescue the Sith Lord's only daughter, who wasn't supposed to know that she was his daughter, because said Sith Lord wasn't supposed to know he _had _a daughter. It would have been amusing, had she been in a better mood.

It wasn't concern for her own life that prompted her impatience, though.

On the contrary, she knew that if Kenobi didn't arrive in time, her father would do whatever it took to save her life, even if that meant directly turning on Tarkin and taking on the entire crew aboard the Death Star.

And it would mean a death sentence for him, when the Emperor found out.

Thankfully, Bail Organa had gone out of his way to keep her away from Palpatine's view during her youth, and her father had likewise ensured that she would not have to spend time in the Emperor's presence until she was a member of the Imperial Senate. Just being anywhere remotely near the Emperor made something inside of Leia shudder, and she was certain it had to do with more than just the fact that he was a Sith, for she had never had such a reaction to her father, not even the first time she had seen him choke someone with the Force on the HoloNet.

He had taken great care not to do such things in her presence, of course, but she had learned about them just the same as she grew older

_I wonder if he'll choke Tarkin for his incompetence after I escape,_ Leia thought with a touch of malicious glee.

Bail would have been terribly disappointed to hear her thinking such a thing, but she couldn't help the way she felt. The day Tarkin died, she rather wanted there to be a parade, with interstellar bands and lightstreamers and the entire works, just to show the galaxy what a true celebration it was.

After what he'd done to Alderaan, Leia would have liked to get the Governor alone in a locked room, her father's lightsaber in hand.

She had begun instruction with the elegant, deadly weapon at the age of fourteen, after years of begging and being told that she was too young. It was too dangerous to risk letting her have a lightsaber of her own, of course, if she'd been discovered to own one it would have tipped off Bail and the Emperor, but her father had let her wield his often enough that she had been able to gain a sufficient mastery with the weapon.

Of course, that didn't mean she was eager to test her skills out against a real Jedi.

Though she had been careful to shield such thoughts, Leia couldn't help feeling a twinge of dread at the thought of her father once again facing off with his former Master.

After all, the last time they had met, her father had been permanently scarred and broken.

Full of anxiety, she was tempted to reach out to her father with the Force, but he had cautioned her against it, lest they alert Kenobi to the unforeseen developments in his plans. While Obi-Wan might be a galaxy away at the moment, he also might already be onboard the Death Star for all she knew, her father had told her he would not be able to warn her of the Jedi's arrival, and she couldn't risk it.

Sighing, she lay down across the durasteel bench, and stared up at the black ceiling high overhead. 

Her thoughts turned to her foster family, but she would not allow herself to wonder what their final moments had been like, that line of thinking would only lead her into madness. Instead, she thought back to her childhood, of how Bail always made time to read her a story before bed, even if he was offworld he would comm the palace and read to her over the comm-unit by her bed.

_Oh, Papa,_ she thought, closing her eyes as her heart wrenched painfully. _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's all my fault._

And it was, in the end.

It was because of her that Tarkin had chosen Alderaan, of all worlds, to destroy, and she would have to carry that burden, to live with that guilt, for the rest of her life. 

_You are not to blame for this, _her father had told her with quiet firmness during his visit to her cell shortly after her homeworld's destruction. _There is only one who can be held accountable for Alderaan's destruction, Leia, and it is not you. None of this is your fault, my child._

Deep down, she knew that he was right, knew that she was not responsible, but in her heart... 

In her heart, just as in her dreams when she'd let sleep take her since watching her homeworld be destroyed, she heard Bail asking why she hadn't saved them, heard her people crying out, demanding to know why she had to join the Rebellion and bring this tragedy upon them all.

Dreams pass in time, or so her father had always told her when nightmares plagued her sleep.

But somehow, Leia suspected that these dreams, and the memory of the stillness that had fallen over the galaxy in the instant before Alderaan was wiped away, would haunt her for several lifetimes.

A sudden commotion filtered through the thick walls of her cell, and Leia blinked, startled, snapping her head around to stare at the door.

Then there was silence for a long, tense moment.

She didn't dare reach out with her Force perceptions, if it was Obi-Wan she wasn't supposed to even know the Force existed, much less how to use it, but she sensed a strong, bright presence drawing closer to her now, one that she felt, inexplicable as it was, that she could almost remember from a lifetime ago.

Perhaps Obi-Wan had been there when she was born, that would explain it.

Faint noise seeped through the heavy door of her detention cell, and she thought she heard a blaster in the distance, so she took a deep breath, drawing her mental shields tighter around her mind as she purposefully relaxed her body.

On the inside, though, she was anything but relaxed.

She was about to come face to face with Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi Master who had raised her father and trained him in the ways of the Force.

And she had to admit, she was curious to find out what he was like.

If there was one subject that she had learned, at a young age, not to pester her father about, it was anything related to Obi-Wan. It was painful for him to speak about her mother, but he indulged her questions, if only because he felt it prudent that a girl know her mother in memory, if not in actuality. He had even occasionally answered her questions about the Jedi, albeit with obvious bitterness towards the extinct Order. 

They had taken much from him after all.

But Obi-Wan was a mystery, of sorts, one that she had often wondered about despite herself. She knew that he had confronted her father shortly after her father had joined Palpatine, knew that there had been a duel which ended with her father forever trapped within a prison of black armor.

Before that, though, they had been friends, comrades... family, even.

Her father had loved this man once, of that she was wholly certain, despite his denial of any such thing. 

And now, at some point during this rescue and escape, her father was going to confront Obi-Wan Kenobi, the man who had been the only father a young Anakin Skywalker had ever known, and kill him. 

Despite herself, Leia shivered as she closed her eyes.

A low whoosh alerted her that the door to her cell had just opened, but she waited a full heartbeat before opening her eyes, as if she had just come out of a half-sleep, and lifted her head expecting to find herself staring back at a greatly aged version of the single holo she had ever seen of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

But it was not the Jedi Master who stepped through the door.

Instead, it was a stormtrooper.

A remarkably short stormtrooper who was staring at her quite strangely.

Irritated, Leia raised an eyebrow as she propped herself on one elbow. "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" she asked pointedly.

"Huh?" came a voice that didn't fit with the armor. "Oh, the uniform." 

With that, the stormtrooper pulled off his helmet, revealing a tousle of blond hair and the handsome face of a young man who couldn't be older than she was, who might have been even younger, perhaps, he had such a gentle, naive expression.

Leia started to open her mouth, but her eyes caught with his and instantly the rest of the galaxy faded away, a dim whisper of a half-forgotten dream stirring within her heart, like a faint echo of a familiar song that she knew every note of, but couldn't seem to place.

And then the boy spoke, and the galaxy suffered a paradigm shift.

"I'm Luke Skywalker," he told her earnestly. "I'm here to rescue you."

A zap of something like lightning shot through Leia's entire body, from her head to the tips of her toes, and she jolted with shock, as if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.

"You're _who_!" she demanded incredulously, unable to tear her gaze away from those blue, blue eyes as she sat up, the detention cell forgotten, her worries for her father forgotten. Everything except for that boy, that _name_, ceased to exist to her in that moment.

Everything inside of her rebelled, fiercely and defiantly, for the only one with the right to claim that name was her, it was her birthright, the name she had been born with.

But those eyes... she knew those eyes.

"I'm here to rescue you," Luke repeated quickly, gesturing over his shoulder towards the open door, where the sounds of blaster fire could still be heard in the distance. "I've got your Artoo unit. I'm here with Ben Kenobi!"

"Ben Kenobi?" Leia echoed in surprise, pulling her shields tighter again, and cursing herself in case she had been broadcasting in the presence of the Jedi Master. Had Obi-Wan changed his name when he went into hiding from the Empire? It didn't matter, she reminded herself sharply, she was supposed to be escaping, after all. "Where is he?"

"Come on," Luke urged, gesturing toward the door.

Without bothering to lift her dress, Leia bounded across the floor of the cell and up the steps leading to the dimly lit corridor of the detention center, following the golden haired boy with her true name. 

And her father's eyes.


	5. Act IV

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act IV**

Everything was going according to plan.

All of the pieces were now falling swiftly into place, and soon the dejarik game would be over and his.

From a young age, he had shown a remarkable aptitude for strategy, and, he was willing to concede in the privacy of the shadowed corners of his mind, his Jedi training had nurtured that skill.

It was everything else inside of him that the Order had tried to kill.

But that was of little importance anymore, he had brought the Jedi to their knees and showed them the true power of the Force, what it meant to master that power instead of allowing oneself to be mastered by it. The Jedi were gone now, they could not hurt him further or take anything more from him.

He had seen to that.

Once the Jedi had numbered in the tens of thousands, once they had been a force to be reckoned with, a great power in the galaxy, but that was long ago.

Now the Jedi had all died out, save for one.

Turning his focus back to the man seated before him at the long, black table, Darth Vader stared hard at Governor Wilhuff Tarkin for a long moment, pondering whether or not the man's usefulness had yet to fade. The large, dim office was meant to inspire fear and intimidation in all those who entered, and perhaps it did just that to lesser man, but Vader found the decor amusing at best.

In truth, there was very little that could frighten him anymore.

"He is here," Vader declared evenly, watching Tarkin closely for the man's reaction, and he was not disappointed.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi?" Tarkin replied, looking up with a startled, and somewhat apprehensive expression. "What makes you think so?"

"A tremor in the Force," Vader answered vaguely, and beneath his mask a small, bitter smile tugged onto his scarred lips. "The last time I felt it was in the presence of my old Master."

"Surely he must be dead by now," Tarkin protested as he rose from his chair, and it was clear that the man desperately wanted Vader to agree with him.

The idea of a Jedi on the loose, especially one who had once been among the most respected and renowned Masters in the Order, was quite alarming from an Imperial perspective. Vader could sense the churning mess of fear and anxiety stirring within Tarkin, and he almost chuckled despite himself.

Whether Tarkin knew it or not, he had much more to fear than Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

Gloved fingers flexed of their own accord at his belt, itching to squeeze the man's throat until it crushed itself under the power of the Force.

_Patience, _he reminded himself coolly. _The time for that will come soon enough._

"Don't underestimate the power of the Force," Vader told him lowly, and a wiser man would have heard the undercurrent of warning in his tone. 

"The Jedi are extinct," Tarkin argued pompously, and the comm-unit installed into the table chirped, alerting an incoming message from somewhere within the looming battlestation. "Their fire has gone out of the universe."

As if Vader needed to be told that, when he was the one who had snuffed out the once brilliant flame.

"You, my friend," Tarkin said with a tight smile as he moved to the comm-unit. "Are all that's left of their religion."

Something inside of Vader stiffened at those words, and he glared at Tarkin from behind the mask. The insinuation, whether it was intentional or not, that he was the remnant of the Jedi Order, something born out of the ashes of the Jedi, unsettled him deeply.

The Jedi in him had been murdered a lifetime ago.

"Yes?" Tarkin called into the comm-unit.

"We have an emergency alert in Detention Block AA-23," a security officer's announcement filled the room from the hidden speakers inserted into the surface of the table. 

"The princess?" Tarkin concluded grimly. "Put all sections on alert."

Vader waited for the Governor to cut the comm-link, inwardly taking great enjoyment from the sudden ashen hue of the man's face, before speaking. "Obi-Wan is here," he reiterated smugly. "The Force is with him."

"If you're right," Tarkin replied shakily. "He must not be allowed to escape."

"Escape is not his plan," Vader assured him evenly, and a gloved hand moved to the hilt of his lightsaber at his side. "I must face him," he paused to fix Tarkin with a hard look. "Alone."

Without waiting for a response, the Sith Lord turned and strode out of the room, his cloak fluttering behind him, and started down the durasteel corridor in the direction of the detention center. He dared not reach out to Leia with his former Master so close in proximity, but he contented himself with looking inward with the Force, and sensing that she was on the move.

He would have to trust that Obi-Wan's friends would get her safely away from the Death Star, and that if anything came up Leia would be able to handle the situation on her own.

She was, after all, his daughter.

And the Force was strong with her, which was a reassurance he was grateful to have after seeing the scrapheap of a ship that Obi-Wan had come here on. The battered freighter was of Corellian design, a YT-1300 if his guess was right, which he was certain it was, there wasn't a ship in the galaxy that he couldn't figure out in a matter of minutes.

"_Don't ask me how he does it, ships just love my Padawan."_

Vader shook his head lightly, banishing the ghosts of another life from his mind.

Closing his eyes behind his mask for a moment, he let the stillness of the Force wash over him. He did not seek out the presence he was looking for, instead he merely listened, waited, and the presence was revealed to him soon enough, a distant and hushed whisper.

Before, he had gotten a faint whiff of it, but now it was a bright beacon, bidding him closer, drawing him in like familiar laughter that he had not heard in many long years.

He started walking again before he even opened his eyes, letting the Force guide his footsteps.

As he made his way towards the hangar bay, Vader forced his mind to become a blank slate, a calm pool of water, and did not permit memories to surface, even as they stirred more with every step he took. The closer he drew to the hangar, the more keenly he felt Obi-Wan's presence, and a shameful part of him, a small sliver that he stifled and stomped down deep into the shadows, ached at sensing the familiar presence so close, and yet so terribly far.

It was the one presence that he could never forget; it had been with him since boyhood, the single constant in a life of loss and loneliness. Once, the feel of that presence nearby would have filled him with utter relief and warmth, giving him strength and purpose, but that was a different life. 

Now, he just felt numb.

"_You will be a Jedi, I promise you."_

He had been a fool once, to believe the promises of the Jedi, especially those of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

In the end, his former Master had shown his true colors and betrayed him. Their last meeting had been fierce and full of rage, rage which had caused him to make a fatal mistake and allow Obi-Wan to walk away from their duel while he had to crawl up out of the molten fire, little more than a whisper of life. If not for Palpatine, he would have died there that day, which had been Obi-Wan's intention.

The Jedi Master had come to Mufustar to kill him, but he had failed. 

Today, Vader would ensure that their rematch had decidedly different results, and only one of them would emerge from this confrontation alive.

He came to a halt just a turn away from the hangar bay, pausing in the middle of the archway, and was momentarily startled to find his lightsaber already ignited in his hand. Had he removed it from his belt and turned it on, without realizing it while he was deep in thought?

A stirring in his mind caused him to lift his head, and he felt Obi-Wan drawing near. 

"_Never rush into a fight, Anakin. Be patient, peaceful, and let the fight come to you"._

Emerging from the foggy memory, a hooded figure cautiously moved into sight at the other end of the corridor, an unlit lightsaber in hand, moving much slower than Vader would have expected, and paused at the sight of the towering Sith Lord looming ahead of him.

The man staring back at him was not the Obi-Wan Kenobi that Vader remembered.

This was not the young Master who had frantically buckled his crash-webbing the moment he got into a speeder with his Padawan, nor the somber Jedi Master who had confronted him on Mufustar, but an older, wearier version.

His tunic was long and faded, speckled with dirt and grime, and the dark brown robe he wore over it was tattered and dingy, the edges fraying with age.

A tanned face, older and distinctly sadder than he recalled, looked out at him beneath the flimsy hood, and a tuft of white, thinning hair was visible to match the short, wispy beard that adorned the sharp chin.

The once proud, regal looking Jedi Master had been reduced to a weak, dusty old beggar.

For some reason, that struck Vader as profoundly wrong, but he could not for the life of him explain why he would feel such a thing.

"_The life of a Jedi is a simple one, young Padawan."_

Simple indeed.

Moving forward purposefully, Vader kept his eyes trained on the face of his former Master, his lightsaber held low, and as he drew closer, the unlit lightsaber in Obi-Wan's hand flickered to life, pointed directly at Vader, but Obi-Wan did not make any move to act.

"I've been waiting for you, Obi-Wan," Vader said smoothly as he came to a halt in front of him. "We meet again at last." 

Obi-Wan did not reply, shifting his weight slightly as he eyed the Sith Lord warily, both hands wrapping around the hilt of his lightsaber as he moved into a faint echo of a dueling position. 

"The circle is now complete," Vader declared, bringing his own lightsaber up to mirror Obi-Wan's. "When last we met, I was but the learner. Now I am the Master."

"Only a Master of evil, Darth," Obi-Wan replied softly, with haunting regret in his blue-gray eyes.

_Am I supposed to start addressing you as 'Darth' now, then? Anakin, come to your senses, before it's too late!_

Echoes of the past stirring in his ears, Vader allowed Obi-Wan to make the first strike, and when the old man swung his blue blade to the left, he brought his own red one up to meet it. Obi-Wan twisted his wrists, attempting to push Vader's blade down, but Vader swiftly cut it around and over.

And their blades clashed again and again.


	6. Act V

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act V**

* * *

It wasn't the craziest thing she'd ever done.

Then again, that wasn't exactly saying much, as Leia was certain her father would point out the minute he learned about her little foray into the garbage pit, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

And, despite the near-death experience and the smell, it had worked.

Somehow, though, she didn't think that logic was going to work on her Sith Lord father.

Whatever Obi-Wan Kenobi had been thinking when he put this rescue together, it was clear that all those years out in the wasteland desert had affected his brain, because Leia had a feeling her own plan, to knock out a stormtrooper and sneak out in his armor, would have been pulled off more smoothly than this.

_Where the Force is that crazy flyboy?_ she wondered irritably. _He's probably gotten himself killed by now._

There was no logic to why a nice, earnest boy like Luke was hanging around with a scruffy, condescending nerf-herder like that, but Leia didn't have time to question his taste in friends at the moment.

Tucked into a narrow recess, back pressed against the wall, she held her breath as stormtroopers clopped past.

When the sounds of heavy footsteps had passed, Luke cautiously leaned forward and peered out into the corridor, then turned back to her with a grim expression. "It's clear for the moment," he told her. "Let's go, we've got to find a way to get to the ship."

Nodding her head in agreement, Leia followed him as he started down the hall, blaster in hand.

At least when the flyboy and the Wookiee gallovanted off to chase the guards, Luke had stayed behind with her. The situation was bad enough with a whole battlestation full of troops searching for her, no doubt with orders from Tarkin to shoot her on sight, it would have been even worse to be alone.

And there was something eerily comforting about Luke's presence, she felt safe with him, just as she felt safe with her father, and she couldn't really explain it.

Once they were safely away from the Death Star, though, she was determined to get some answers.

The hair on the back of her neck bristled a moment before Leia heard them approaching.

_Oh, shavit, _she thought with a groan.

Luke must have heard them, too, because his head jerked slightly, and she wondered if maybe he hadn't felt them coming just as she had.

There would be time to ponder that later, though.

"Run," she said quickly- at the same time that Luke spoke that exact same words.

They blinked at each other, both startled, and for a moment something indefinable seemed to swell in the air between them, but a blaster bolt streaking towards them shattered the moment.

Not bothering to look over her shoulder, Leia broke into a run, with Luke beside her, knowing there was a band of stormtroopers in the corridor behind them.

Luke fired his blaster back at them a few times, but she didn't think he was actually doing any damage, so she grabbed his elbow and pulled him along as she raced down the corridor. Spotting a side hallway, they ducked down it together, and found it was considerably narrower, leading Leia to suspect it was a service hallway.

The stormtroopers followed, the pursuit sounding deafeningly loud in the confining space, but at least it minimized the amount of fire the troops could concentrate on them.

A warning from the Force allowed Leia to dart aside, moving fast and light on the balls of her feet, just before a blaster bolt hit the spot where her head had been only a second before. Dodging a second blaster bolt, she picked up the pace and rounded the corner after Luke.

He led the way down the hall and up the ramp at the end of it, through a thick hatchway, and Leia's senses tingled just in time for her to reach out and grab Luke's arm to steady him as he teetered on the sudden edge of the retracted bridge.

He gave her a grateful look, then glanced around grimly. "I think we took a wrong turn," he muttered.

That was putting it mildly.

A blaster bolt shot above their heads, sending sparks flying from where it ricocheted off the durasteel wall, and Leia ducked against the side of the hatchway as Luke turned to open fire on the stormtroopers at the bottom of the ramp behind them.

Another blaster bolt whizzed past her, and Leia turned to the wall, her hands moving to the control panel and fingers dancing across the panel until they instinctively stilled over the switch she needed.

The door to the hatch slid closed with a low whoosh, muffling the sounds of blasters on the other side.

"There's no lock," Leia cried in frustration.

Grabbing her hand, Luke pulled her around to his other side, careful to keep her as far from the ledge as possible, and Leia clutched his arm for extra balance, glancing down at the long, fathomless drop at the end of the platform. She hedged closer to his side as he aimed his blaster at the control panel, and turned her face into his shoulder to shield her eyes from the blast.

"That ought to hold them," Luke declared as the panel smoked and melted.

"Quick," Leia told him, nodding to the open hatchway on the other side of shaft. "We've got to get across. Find the controls to extend the bridge."

"I think I just blasted them," Luke groaned.

Muffled pounding, accompanied by a low hissing, filtered through the heavy door behind them, and Leia sensed that it would only be a matter of time until the stormtroopers got the door open.

"They're coming through," she warned anxiously.

Leia was sorely tempted to reach out to her father for help, but she didn't dare. She knew that he was confronting his former Master, and though he was confident he would be the victor of their rematch, Leia could not forget him telling her that he was not as strong as he had once been.

It would distract him to feel her calling to him, and the tiniest distraction could be fatal in such a situation.

Besides, he had instructed her to only use the Force in her escape if there was no other option, because Obi-Wan would feel it if she did, and even with Kenobi busy at the moment, Leia had no way of knowing whether or not Luke would recognize a manipulation of the Force or not.

She couldn't take the chance.

Glancing over at the blond-haired boy beside her, Leia bit her lip as she studied his profile while Luke looked around the shaft worriedly, hoping to find some way out of this mess.

He had a slight cleft in his chin, just like her father.

Suddenly Luke stiffened, and his hand quickly went to his utility belt, just as blaster fire hit the wall beside them, from somewhere overhead. Leia tried to stretch her neck to see where it had come from, but Luke pushed her behind him and against the wall of the hatchway, returning fire at a platform across the shaft and up a level, where more stormtroopers were gathering with the one that had shot at them.

_Great,_ she thought, wincing as another blaster bolt came too close for comfort. _What I wouldn't give for Father's lightsaber right about now._

At least then she could have been deflecting the blaster bolts, instead of doing nothing.

Ducking as more blaster fire rained down upon them, Luke pressed in close alongside her in the hatchway, poking out again a moment later to shoot down the stormtrooper who had shot at them to begin with.

As the white-armored figure fell down the shaft, the other stormtroopers inched back, out of Luke's aim.

"Here," Luke said, handing Leia the blaster. "Hold this."

The stormtroopers overhead fired again, and Leia moved past Luke to shoot back, while he was fiddling with some kind of cord from his utility belt. He had a plan, she could sense that much, so she didn't question him, even as the door behind them groaned, lifting an inch.

"Here they come," she warned him sharply, and her next blaster shot took down a stormtrooper above them.

Luke stepped to the edge of the platform, and Leia covered him as he swung the grappling hook out across the open shaft. With smooth precision that should have been impossible, he latched it around an outcropping of pipes above, and gave the cord an experimental tug, testing its strength.

Once he was certain it would hold them, Luke looked over at her, and she moved to his side at once, letting him pull her close and wrapping her own arms around him for extra support.

Just as they were about to swing, she felt a sudden inspiration, and she kissed him on the cheek.

"For luck," she murmured when he gave her a bewildered look. _We're going to need it,_ she added to herself, and closed her eyes as Luke pushed off of the platform, sending them out arching across the open emptiness of the deep shaft.

By the Force's grace, Luke's aim had been perfect and his timing flawless, and they landed on the other side a moment later, just as blaster fire opened up behind them.

Leia grabbed Luke by the arm, pulling him away from the ledge, as the stormtroopers finally made it through the door on the other side of the shaft. Neither of them glanced back, though, as they ran down the ramp in front of them and started down the corridor as fast as they could.

"We're almost at the hangar," Luke told her breathlessly, leading the way around a corner. "It's just ahead."

And so was her father, Leia could sense him nearby.

They were almost out of this nightmarish battlestation, although she had her doubts about the raggedy ship that Luke had come here on, and soon they would be free of the stormtroopers and Tarkin.

One small move on the dejarik board, but it was a critical one.

By the end of the game, they would be free of the Emperor, as well.

Everything was going according to plan, everything was unfolding exactly the way her father had foreseen that it would.

Glancing at her blue-eyed companion as they hurried down the corridor, Leia bit her lip.

Almost everything, anyway.


	7. Act VI

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act VI**

* * *

A lightsaber was more than just an elegant weapon.

It was an extension of its wielder, a physical connection between the swordsman and the Force, flowing like wind and moving as smooth as water when in the hands of one who could touch the Force.

To one who carried a lightsaber, the weapon was their life.

That was one of the first lessons that he had ever learned as a child being introduced into the Jedi world, and he had heard it repeated often over the years of his youth, usually with exasperation and a touch of impatience. Though he had long since turned his back on the ways of the Jedi, he had never forgotten that.

Some lessons, he conceded, were hard to unlearn.

Blades crashed together, crimson red against sky blue, with enough force that both opponents felt the impact down through their hands and into their bones.

Or what was in the place of bones, Darth Vader mused bitterly.

He pressed forward determinedly, with quick and prodding strikes, tentatively driving his former Master back so that Obi-Wan had to spin to block.

The old Jedi slid his blade along Vader's, searching for an opening, but Vader knocked their blades into a downward tangle, then jerked his lightsaber up swiftly, only to crash into Obi-Wan's. Putting his weight and strength into the cross, Vader pushed against the blades, overpowering the weaker man.

Rather than be struck down, Obi-Wan danced out of his reach, and Vader's lightsaber slash spliced a control panel on the wall, showering the corridor with smoke and sparks.

Obi-Wan was still quite agile for an old man.

The two men eyed each other narrowly, lightsabers bobbing lightly as they moved on their toes, each awaiting a strike from the other.

"Your powers are weak, old man," Vader sneered.

"You can't win, Darth," Obi-Wan replied in the silky voice that once veiled frustration with a wayward student. He was as calm and emotionless as ever, and Vader hated him for it. "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

The old man swung left and then back right to parry the strike of Vader's blade.

They continued to parry and thrust, striking with meticulous, calculated blows, willing to let whole seconds pass without movement from either of them. This was not like the last battle they had fought, that had been a fight of anger and hate, emotional and raging, wounds fresh and raw.

Eighteen years later, they were both changed men.

Vader did not hate the man before him any longer, he had long since moved past such pettiness. Obi-Wan was the last real tie to the boy that Vader had left behind in the molten fire, and for that reason, more than because of any decree by the Emperor, he would be eliminated.

And then Vader would finally be free of the lingering ghosts that had not left him in all these years.

"You should not have come back," Vader said flatly, and struck, forcing Obi-Wan to block two quick and sharp slashes of his lightsaber.

Their pace quickened with faster, elegant fencing strokes.

There was no flamboyance in their moves, no aggressive outbursts of violence or power like the last time they had clashed, just controlled and disciplined prowess. Obi-Wan was an accomplished swordsmen, he had once been considered one of the best in the Order, but Vader had learned much from him in their years together, and he knew how to anticipate what Obi-Wan do next.

After all, it had been none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi who taught him to wield a lightsaber in the first place.

_Perhaps you taught me too well, Obi-Wan,_ Vader thought to himself with a mirthless chuckle. But that was the way it was, in the end, apprentice surpassed the Master, and then the apprentice became the Master.

Soon enough, Vader would surpass and replace a second Master, as well.

Obi-Wan disengaged his blade from the dangerous tangle, stepping back, and Vader moved in, his lightsaber prodding the old man back as they drifted closer to the open doorway of the hangar bay.

This had been Obi-Wan's intention all along, Vader knew, to draw the stormtroopers guarding the Corellian freighter to them, so that his friends could sneak onto the ship with Leia and get safely away from the Death Star while Obi-Wan sacrificed himself.

Fortunately for Obi-Wan, this suited Vader's purposes, as well.

Soon Leia would be safe, even if that meant she would be far away from Vader. As long as his daughter was alive, then everything else was unimportant.

Now directly in front of the opening to the hangar, both Vader and Obi-Wan, as if acting on some silent cue that they alone could hear, began to intensify their duel. Small steps became lunges and simple strikes dramatic stabs, quickly drawing the attention of the stormtroopers within the hangar as the sound of their blades clashing filled the air.

A dozen pairs of footsteps clanked across the durasteel floor as the stormtroopers rushed toward the dueling figures, and Vader detected a flicker of Leia's awareness close by.

She was just outside of the hangar, he could sense her.

It was time to bring this to a close, and be done with Obi-Wan once and for all.

But first, there was one last detail that needed to be put to use, one last little blow to strike before he sent his former Master to become one with the Force.

"Your failure is complete, Obi-Wan," the Sith Lord pronounced, and behind the mask his scarred lips curved up into a cold, broad smile. "Did you really think that you could hide my own child from me and I would not know?"

To his satisfaction, Obi-Wan faltered, and for a fleeting moment there was genuine alarm on the old man's face, but it passed quickly, his serene calm returning, acting as a mask to conceal his inner workings. "I had hoped that I could, yes," Obi-Wan replied smoothly, parrying Vader's strike. "A pity it didn't work out that way."

"For you, perhaps," Vader retorted, crashing his lightsaber against Obi-Wan's. "Your lack of judgment ensured that my daughter would be returned to me."

A strange flicker touched Obi-Wan's eyes, but he could not define what it meant, even as it faded, replaced with a shrewd, speculative gleam. "You knew I was on Tatooine all along," he said evenly, and it wasn't a question, but a realization. "Bail told Leia where to find me in case she ever needed my help. Why didn't you ever come for me, then?"

"I would have thought you'd be pleased to find I have finally mastered the art of patience," Vader sneered, twisting his wrists and cutting his red blade down to slash at the older man's side. "You were not, and never have been, of any threat or consequence to me, Obi-Wan, you were unimportant. And so I simply bided my time, waiting for the Force to bring you to me for execution."

Obi-Wan stared at him in silence over their crossed blades, blue-gray eyes dim with oppressive things, regrets and sadness clearly visible at the forefront.

But he did not look defeated, as Vader had expected him to.

"You still have much to learn," Obi-Wan declared quietly.

As he lunged forward with a swift slash of his lightsaber, Vader sensed Leia bursting into the hangar beyond, felt her relief that she was almost away from the Death Star, felt her anxiety when she caught sight of the duel taking place, and for a moment he thought she would rush towards him.

She didn't, but neither did she rush to board the rickety ship, either.

Obi-Wan looked away towards Leia and her rescuers, something indefinable stirring within him, and then he turned back to Vader, a tiny, enigmatic smile flitting across his face.

Vader remembered that infuriating smile all too well, it was the smile of a sneaky Master who knew something that his Padawan didn't, and he growled internally, grateful that in a moment he would never have to see it again for all the days of his life.

As if listening to Vader's own thoughts and desires, Obi-Wan lifted his lightsaber in front of his face, the blue glow illuminating the sad twinkle in those blue-gray eyes, catching a glimmer of some wetness there, and Vader did not hesitate.

Slashing his blade around hard, he cut his former Master in two.

For a haunting moment, he heard Obi-Wan's weary laughter in his mind, and then the robes crumpled lifelessly to the floor, empty save for the extinguished hilt of a familiar lightsaber.

Distantly, he was aware of someone shouting, and of blasters opening fire.

Still, he did not look away from the empty robes on the floor before him, where only moments ago Obi-Wan Kenobi had been standing.

Taking a step closer, Vader purposefully prodded the crumpled robes with his booted foot, half-expecting Obi-Wan to jump out of them, but of course there was nothing there.

_Master?_ Vader thought before he could catch himself, and he was disgusted by how small and frightened the voice within him sounded, like a nine year-old Padawan who'd gotten separated from his guardian on some strange world.

There was no answer, regardless.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was gone.

_Father?_ Leia's anxious cry filled his head.

The sound of her mental voice was enough to shake him out of his reverie, and Vader turned towards the hangar bay, starting forward even as the doors began to iris closed.

Someone had managed to hit the control panel.

_Go, _Vader told his daughter shortly, and could not explain the strain in his voice. _While you still can._

He both saw and felt Leia hesitate on the ramp leading into the battered Corellian ship, and Force-enhanced hearing heard her call out to whoever was still firing at the stormtroopers.

"Luke!"

As the boy turned and ran for the ship, Vader caught sight of a flash of golden hair running towards the ship, just before the doors completely sealed shut, cutting him off from the hangar beyond.

Turning back to the robes piled on the floor, the only evidence that Obi-Wan had ever been there, Vader stared down at the lightsaber nestled on top of those robes for a long moment.

Then he moved forward, calling the familiar silver hilt of Obi-Wan's lightsaber hands with the Force, and he ran his gloved hand over the grooves and notches of the elegant weapon. It was rusty and bore scars that had not been there the last time that Vader had seen it, but he knew it instinctively, knew its very essence.

How many times had he seen this weapon used, flashing and dancing in combat? How many times had it appeared at the last second to even the odds in his favor? He had even wielded it on occasion as a boy before he'd built his own on Illum, had carried it at his side for several weeks after the nightmarish events of Jabiim when it was believed that Obi-Wan had perished.

For a long moment, Vader stared down at the robes crumpled on the floor, though he could not say what held his attention.

"Sir?"

Strange that he had not detected the stormtrooper's approach.

"Dispose of these," Vader ordered, gesturing to the tattered old cloth on the floor with the toe of his boot. "I want them destroyed and removed from my sight."

"Yes, sir," the stormtrooper replied with a curt nod.

It wasn't until he had already turned and began to stride down the corridor that Vader realized he was still holding Obi-Wan's lightsaber.

Pausing, he glanced back to find that the stormtrooper had already gathered up the robes and departed to follow out his orders, and Vader stared down at the lightsaber with a frown. It did not feel heavy, as he had expected it would, but rather it felt inexplicably natural and warm in his hands

_Keep it, _a voice told him, one that did not strike him as his own. _It belongs to you now._

In a different life, perhaps, it would have. That was the Jedi custom, after all, for the Master's weapon to be passed down to the apprentice in the event of the Master's death so that a piece of the Master would always be with his beloved student, but he was not a Jedi any longer.

At times it was hard to believe he ever had been.

_Keep it, _the voice urged smoothly, with a hint of wryness. _As a trophy._

A trophy.

Yes, he could keep it as trophy, a simple monument to all that he had become, to his greatest triumph. Obi-Wan Kenobi, the only Jedi who he had never defeated, the only man who had the ability to hurt him, was dead, at his hand, after all these long years of waiting.

It would be fitting to keep a trophy in commemoration of that.

Clipping the weapon to his belt, beside his own lightsaber's black and silver hilt, Darth Vader started down the corridor once more, in the direction of Tarkin's office.

Obi-Wan was dead, the last remnant of the Jedi Order had been wiped out, and Leia had escaped safely to lead them to the Rebel base. It was only a matter of time now, before the next stage of his plans came to pass, and once it did, he and Leia would be one step closer to disposing of the Emperor.

Today had been a highly productive day indeed.


	8. Act VII

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act VII**

* * *

Space was cold.

In her years of traveling with Bail Organa from one sector to another on his diplomatic journeys, Leia had grown accustomed to the chill of it, but she could remember the first time she had experienced a trip through hyperspace at the age of eight.

She'd been expecting the cold, her father had known Bail would be bringing her to Coruscant and had seen fit to warn her ahead of time.

While Alderaan was not exactly a hot planet like her father's homeworld of Tatooine, it was still fairly warm, and the shift in temperature had been drastic enough that Vader had made a point to suggest ahead of time that she remember to bring a warm blanket along, to cover up with when it got too cold.

Though he hadn't come right out and said it, Leia had gotten the feeling that someone had covered him up with a blanket on his first trip into space, as well, to keep him warm after leaving Tatooine.

And the sad longing she'd sensed in him left no doubt in her mind that it had been her mother.

"Here," Leia said softly, wrapping the blanket around Luke's shoulders for the second time.

She'd done so when they first boarded the ship, as well, but he'd shaken it off to run to one of the gun wells in order to take out some of the TIEs pursuing them, and now that they had entered hyperspace he was back in the hold again, brooding over Obi-Wan's death.

"Thanks," Luke said as he drew the blanket tighter around him. "I don't know why I'm so cold."

"Space is a cold place," Leia replied, sitting down beside him. "You come from a warm planet, so it's more noticeable."

"I guess," he murmured downcast. "I don't remember it being this cold on our way to Alderaan, though, before..."

When he trailed off, eyes lowering, Leia's heart ached for him, and she found herself compelled to lift a hand to smooth his tousled hair, feeling the same whispered spark deep within her that she had the very first time they touched, in the escape from the detention center.

"I'm sorry," she told him gently, and she meant it.

She was sorry that Luke was hurting, sorry that she couldn't spare him this pain, sorry that she didn't know how to make him understand...

There were a great many things she was sorry for at the moment.

"I just wish I could have done something," Luke muttered hoarsely.

"There was nothing you could have done," Leia said, repeating her earlier words of comfort. "There was nothing that anyone could have done."

That, she suspected, was neither truth nor lie.

Could she have prevented her father from killing his former Master? She had no idea, and she didn't particularly want to know the answer to that question, because it would have opened another question, one of an entirely different and darker nature.

If she could have stopped the duel, would she have done it?

There was no clear answer, no definite solution, because Leia didn't know how she was supposed to feel about Obi-Wan Kenobi's death, much less how she actually felt.

She had no grandfather, but Obi-Wan had been the closest thing to one that existed, really, having been the man to raise her father, to serve as both parent and guardian to young Anakin Skywalker as he grew up in the Temple on Coruscant. What little she knew about him was biased and filled with her father's bitterness, but she was certain that at one point, the two men had been fiercely devoted and loyal to one another, as much brothers as father and son.

But Obi-Wan had been too much of a Jedi, as decaying as the rest of the Order and too far gone to be brought about to see the truth, to realize that they were no longer following the will of the Force.

Her father's former Master had hunted him down and confronted him on Mufustar above the boiling magma rivers and the lava veins that wove their way across the surface of the volcanic planet, determined to stop him by any means necessary.

It had been Obi-Wan who put her father into the nightmarish prison of black armor.

And for that, Leia hated him.

"That man," Luke said suddenly, his eyes becoming focused and hard. "The one in the armor. That was Darth Vader, wasn't it? I can feel it."

"Yes," Leia confirmed hesitantly. "It was."

"He's the one who killed my father," Luke accused, gaze sharpening. "And now he killed Ben, too."

If not for her Force-training, Leia probably would have gaped at him Incredulously, instead of merely pressing her lips together in a smooth mask she'd perfected during her time in the Senate. "Your father?" she asked carefully.

"He was a Jedi Knight, like Ben," Luke replied, and some of the anger faded from his expression as he smiled sadly. "I never knew him, though, he died a long time ago. My Uncle Owen didn't like to talk about him, Aunt Beru said they just had too many differences, but Ben liked to talk about him. I think there were a lot of stories he wanted to tell me, about their adventures together."

Owen and Beru... those names were familiar... Leia knew she'd heard them mentioned before...

Lars.

That was it, Owen Lars was the son of Cliegg Lars, the man her grandmother Shmi had married while her father was at the Temple. Obi-Wan must have taken Luke to them for safekeeping the way Leia herself had been taken to the Organas, and now it made sense why the old Jedi had chosen to remain on Tatooine all these years.

He'd been watching over Luke.

"Your father," Leia said slowly, and she was amazed that her voice sounded so steady when her heart was pounding in her throat. "What was his name?"

"Anakin," Luke answered. "Anakin Skywalker."

For a moment, the entire galaxy seemed to stand still, frozen in place, and Leia forgot to breathe.

She had known, of course, somehow she had known from the very minute that Luke walked into her cell on the Death Star and told her he was there to rescue her.

That flash of connection, the way his presence seemed to fit perfectly with hers... it all made sense.

Her mother, Vader had told her when she was just a child, had died because of an accident of his making. It hadn't been intentional, but she had been killed, and he'd thought that their unborn child had been killed along with her, until he'd made the chance discovery that Leia's "adoption" wasn't legal and had been kept quiet, prompting a strange urge for him to check her bloodwork.

If Leia had survived, then why not a second child?

Why not Luke?

_Twins, _she thought in a daze, numb with shock._ It would have to be twins._

"What?" Luke asked sharply, and too late she realized that he was staring at her, her expression must have betrayed her, that or his Force-sensitivity had picked up on some echo of the chaotic emotions churning within her. "What is it?"

Leia opened her mouth to speak, to tell him everything, but something stopped her.

What if she told Luke the truth, that Darth Vader had once been Anakin Skywalker, and Luke didn't believe her? What if he ran away to avoid it? What if, thanks to all the half-truths and lies he'd been fed by Kenobi, he turned on her or on her father?

She couldn't deal with this on her own, there were just too many possibilities and it hurt to think about them.

And how could she possibly tell Luke that everything he thought he knew about his family, about himself, was nothing but an elaborate ruse created by an aging Jedi Master in exile?

It would devastate him, and she couldn't bear to cause him that pain.

No, best that she wait and let her father handle this, he would know what to do. There was more to Darth Vader than just power and strength, he was also brilliant, and never failed to find a solution to a problem.

Vader would know what to do about Luke.

Until then, she would just have to dance around things carefully, and avoid saying something she shouldn't.

Swallowing hard, Leia gave Luke a faint smile. "Nothing," she lied, with the silky ease of a politician who knew how to make untruths sound real. "I was just thinking about my own father, that's all."

"Oh," Luke murmured. "I'm sorry. I forgot about Alderaan..."

"It's all right," Leia assured him.

At the moment she was a little upset with Bail, anyway. Her foster father must have known there were two, and he'd kept it from her, just as he'd tried to keep the truth about her real father from her. He had been in cahoots with Kenobi, after all, which meant that both men had played a part in keeping her and Luke apart, and she was furious because of it.

And when her father found out...

Vader had been outraged when he discovered her existence, that he had a daughter who had been stolen from him, she could only imagine how much angrier he would be, how much more betrayed he would feel, to learn about Luke.

"Don't worry, Princess," Luke told her, with grim determination. "Vader and the Empire will pay."

"My name is Leia," she replied quietly, distantly amused to hear him, of all people, addressing her like that. "And Tarkin will pay for what he did to Alderaan, yes, but Vader played no part in my homeworld's destruction."

"It doesn't matter," Luke said darkly. "I'm sure he's blown up dozens of other worlds."

"He hasn't," Leia snapped, before she could stop herself, and when Luke looked at her in surprise, she bit her lip, calling on the Force to drain her anger and using a calming technique that her father had taught her. "I'm sorry, I just don't like hearing Tarkin's evil trivialized," she amended quickly.

"I didn't mean to-"

"I know," Leia cut off his apology with a weak smile. "There's nothing to apologize for, Luke."

And there wasn't, he was just speaking his mind, following what he thought he knew to be the simple truth of things, but the truth, Leia knew, was anything but simple.

Hearing the anger in Luke's voice directed at her father, fueled by the lies that Obi-Wan Kenobi had told him, had touched a nerve. It was one thing to hear the Rebellion speak horribly of Darth Vader, to listen to the vicious comments and musings, but it was too much to hear it from Luke.

From her own brother.

_Brother._

_Oh, Force, _she thought, the breath knocked out of her. _I have a brother._

It was hard to wrap her mind around that, to fully understand it, but if she'd had any doubts at all, they would have been erased simply by looking at Luke. He had golden hair and blue eyes, like their father, and she had dark hair and eyes to match, like their mother, but she saw a mirror of herself when she looked at Luke, and it went deeper than just the physical features.

Did Luke see it, too?

Did he feel that connection, that pull, every time he looked at her?

"I just wish I'd had the chance to know my father," Luke murmured. "But now that Ben's gone, I've lost the only connection I had left to him. Well, except for this."

When he produced a silver lightsaber hilt, seemingly from out of nowhere, Leia blinked.

Her father's lightsaber.

Not the one he carried now, the one she'd learned how to use, but the one that he'd carried as a Jedi Knight, the one that he'd lost during his duel with Obi-Wan on Mufustar.

_Kenobi kept it, _Leia marveled to herself. _Despite everything, he kept it all these years._

Suddenly, for no logical reason, she was struck by the image of the aging Jedi Master sitting in a small, dirty hovel in the middle of the desert, the winds howling just outside of the thin dirt walls, wasting away with the haunting memories as his only companion.

She could see it perfectly, could picture tired old hands opening a small case and removing a lightsaber hilt heavier in his hands than it really was, and running weak, but nimble fingers over every groove and notch.

Fingers reverently keeping up with its care, even as his own weapon rusted and aged.

"It was my father's," Luke said, not knowing that was completely unnecessary. "Obi-Wan thought that he would have wanted me to have it."

"I'm sure he would have," Leia managed a faint smile.

"When I hold it," Luke murmured. "I can feel him, you know? Sometimes it's like he's not really gone, he's just very far away and we can't find each other. I guess that sounds pretty crazy, huh?"

"No," Leia replied softly, blinking at the wetness in her eyes as she drew him into an embrace that was as much for her own comfort as it was for his. "No, that doesn't sound crazy at all."

_Oh, Luke,_ she thought, her chest tightening. _If you only knew._


	9. Act VIII

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act VIII

* * *

**

Meditation had gotten easier over the years.

In his youth, it had been a task that he struggled with, not because it was hard to find the right connection to the Force, that had always come as instinctively as breathing, but because he had never been one for sitting still.

_Outside in the rain with a broken droid in your hands? Not a meditation technique I taught you, I think._

Moving meditation had been his forte, much to Obi-Wan's chagrin, but his mind could float free and unrestrained while his hands were occupied with a malfunctioning droid or a speeder in need of tuning. Sometimes his hands would still and he'd zone out without noticing, but most of the time he would just completely finish the project without even a moment of conscious thought.

Over the years, Darth Vader had managed to find a degree of blankness that allowed him to meditate still and quiet, but he could not call it peace, that was forever unattainable to him.

In half-foggy memory, he suspected that he had known moments of it in the past, another lifetime ago. On short leave from the war and watching his wife sleep nestled in his arms, or listening to the sound of Leia's laughter as his little girl raced across a meadowy field on Alderaan chasing a decorative sphere that he'd levitated for her.

But even those dreams seemed beyond his reach today.

It had been several hours since Leia's escape aboard the _Millennium Falcon_, and he ventured that the rebels who'd come to her rescue would be nearing their base soon, and assuming that the tracking device placed on the ship worked, it was only a matter of time until Tarkin discovered their location.

Of course, he could have just asked Vader.

Yavin Four was a curious choice for a rebel base, full of symbolism that he doubted its leaders were even aware of. The Massassi Temples there held great power, and represented an era in the history of the Sith long past, but the jungle moon also held a more personal history for Darth Vader.

A lifetime ago, when he'd been just a foolish boy blinded by the lies of the Jedi, he'd fought Asajj Ventress there.

_Come and play, Chosen One... come and die._

He had not thought of the dark witch in decades, not since her death, but perhaps it was to be expected today, a day when ghosts of a past life were free to roam about his quarters, haunting him.

Obi-Wan had been obsessed with bringing Ventress to justice, she'd killed many Jedi during her time serving Count Dooku, but his determination had been more personal than that. After all, Ventress had tortured him for weeks while the Order believed him dead, and, more importantly in Kenobi's eyes, she'd been charged with the task of assassinating his young, stubborn Padawan.

A foolish man, that Kenobi, driven by sentiment whether he could admit it or not.

_Please, Anakin, don't do this! I don't want to fight you, Padawan._

Blades clashed furiously, over and over, the air shimmering with putrid heat from the lava boiling beneath the surface, and thick, acrid black smoke billowed just above their heads, filling their lungs and choking their throats.

Parry. Slash. Block. Cut.

Both pushed themselves to the limit, driven by ravenous emotion that threatened to consume them.

_Anakin... Padawan... don't make me strike you down, I beg you!_

It had been foolish of Obi-Wan to confront him that day, to track him down on Mufustar instead of seeking shelter to hide instead. Had he not been distracted and emotionally unstable during that fight, Vader would have finished his old Master off easily that day.

But Obi-Wan had known what buttons to push, as always.

Fourteen long years together had made his former Master an expert at dealing with a troublesome Padawan, even when said Padawan was no longer an apprentice but a Knight in his own right.

_Your mother would be horrified to see what you've become. Qui-Gon should have left you as a slave on Tatooine._

Perhaps he should have, at that.

At least then fate would have been kinder. His mother would not have suffered the way she did, his wife would not be dead, and he would not be living a half-life, a broken shell of a man clinging to the physical world with all the wretched desperation of a withering shadowmoth.

But it had not been his destiny to deteriorate in the Force-forsaken desert, growing old and weak before his time.

No, his destiny was much greater.

_What would Padme say if she could see you now?_

For a fleeting moment, he could almost sense her presence on the outer edges of his perceptions, just out of sight, out of reach, but he knew it to be just another illusion his traitorous mind turned against him, as it had done often enough through the years.

And though he knew it to be a figment of his imagination, of the sobbing wretch within him that still cried out for her touch, her warmth, a part of him still sought her out, reaching blindly into the endless abyss.

_Are you an angel?_

It seemed so long ago, a hundred lifetimes, that she'd first walked into that dusty shop and into his life.

He'd known from the moment he first laid eyes on her that she was the only woman he'd ever love, that one day she would be his wife. At the time, he hadn't known how he knew this, just as he never knew how he knew things he shouldn't have been able to know, but after being taken to Coruscant, he'd come to realize it had been the Force speaking to him that day.

The Force had brought Padme to him, and it had taken her away again.

_Daddy, how did Mama die?_

As if to balance the scales, it had in turn given him a daughter, a brilliant and bright little girl who was the spitting image of the mother she would never know save in memories he shared with her.

And he had come close to losing Leia, as well.

To think that he might never have gotten to see that special smile she reserved solely for him, or listen to her mutter under her breath about some rival senator in the Imperial Senate, looking and sounding exactly like her mother in those moments, was a daunting thought.

He would have hated Obi-Wan for stealing his only child from him.

_Did you really think that you could hide my own child from me and I would not know?_

Ever since the day he's discovered he had a daughter, Vader had been waiting for the chance to throw yet another of Obi-Wan's failures in the old man's face and crush his spirit with the revelation that Vader had known about Leia since she was just a child. He had given it much thought over the years, imagining the look on his former Master's face, and he'd pondered what words to use in order to make the blow that much more painful.

Let Obi-Wan understand the faintest hint of what Vader had felt upon discovering that his own child had been hidden from him, by the man he'd once considered a father of all people.

_Then my Padawan is truly dead, and I have no choice but to destroy what's taken his place._

Ever since clawing his way out of that molten pit, he had yearned for the chance to repay the living death that Obi-Wan had bestowed upon him in the fires of Mufustar.

It hadn't been what he expected.

For eighteen years, he had waited for that moment, for the day when he would defeat Obi-Wan Kenobi once and for all. He'd dreamed of it, hungered for it, and yet when it came he found he took none of the exhilaration in Kenobi's downfall that he'd assumed he would.

Instead, he felt as if he had been abandoned in the fathomless waters of Mon Calamari, the nearest spec of land out of sight and out of reach, desolate and quiet emptiness all around him, beneath him, enveloping him.

If he screamed, would anyone even hear?

There had been no body, which unsettled him deeply. He had seen hundreds of Jedi die in his lifetime, and killed just as many himself, but not once had a body ever disappeared like that.

In some ways, it simplified things, because what would he have done with the body on a battlestation?

Obi-Wan would have deserved a funeral pyre, but Vader was no Jedi and performing such a ritual was not something he would have deigned to do for the man who had put him into the suit he loathed in the first place.

Perhaps he could have taken the body to Mufustar and dumped it into the lava flows.

It would have been morbidly fitting, really, for Master and Padawan to be consumed by the same flames. He suspected that Obi-Wan, at least, would have seen the irony in that, the macabre symbolism of letting his body be burned up in the same fire that had burned away Anakin Skywalker forever.

_Padawan, I know the odds are against us, we most likely won't make it through this battle. But if this is truly the end,then we'll face it together. Side by side._

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear out the whispers of memory, Darth Vader abandoned his attempts at meditation, since it was clear that he wouldn't be achieving much success today.

There were too many ghosts lingering over his shoulder.

Instead of freeing him as he'd expected it to do, Obi-Wan's death had opened a gateway to a life he'd forsaken, and the floodgates of memory were beginning to crack.

He needed Leia.

There was something soothing about his daughter's luminous presence, something deep and calm that kept the ghosts at bay. He could speak of her mother without the yawning black hole opening within his chest, he could recall stories of his youth in the Temple without malice or fury.

Leia was his anchor in the sea of his own dark despair.

And with Obi-Wan's death hanging over him like a black veil, ushering in demons and ghosts that he had thought to be long banished, he needed her now more than ever.

The sooner they reached Yavin, the better.


	10. Act IX

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act IX

* * *

**

The galaxy was infinitely larger than he'd ever dreamed.

And twice as lonely.

Growing up, Luke Skywalker had always felt different from the other children on Tatooine, even those that he counted as his closest friends.

In some ways, he'd always known that he didn't quite fit in, that he didn't belong there, but he'd never understood those feelings until he'd learned the truth about his father from Ben Kenobi. He was the son of a Jedi Knight, and a great Jedi at that, no wonder he'd felt like he was out of place in the bleak desert.

He wasn't meant for moisture vaporators and farming, but for lightsabers and justice.

The blood of a Jedi flowed through his veins, and, as Ben had revealed to him, he'd been born to follow in his father's footsteps as a servant of the Force.

But it hadn't just been the... uniqueness inside of him that set him apart from the other children.

All his life, Luke had been keenly aware of the absence of his parents, even more so when he watched his friends with their mothers and fathers. Even as a baby, he'd known that he was missing something, that people who were supposed to be there with him were gone, but he'd never been able to explain that feeling.

That sense of loss.

How could he mourn people he'd never even met?

How could he miss them, waking up in the middle of the cold night with the Tatooine winds howling just outside of his door and cry out for someone that he'd never even known?

Then again, very little in Luke's eighteen years had ever made much sense.

_Who would have thought, _he mused to himself with a weary ghost of a smile as he examined the orange flightsuit he'd been given. _That I would ever end up here?_

It had been his dream all his life to get away, to escape the scorching sands of Tatooine and fly from one corner of the galaxy to the next, seeing every star and planet there was to see, but now that he was here, lightyears away from home and about to experience combat for the first time, he was tired.

Physically, he was well-rested, he'd gotten sleep on the Millennium Falcon during hyperspace, Leia had insisted that he get some rest, but he still felt as if he'd been awake for days on end.

As if he'd just stumbled upon the smoking bodies at the homestead.

Everything had happened so fast, part of him was still reeling from it. One morning he'd been complaining about Uncle Owen keeping him stuck at the farm, wondering if he could sneak off to fly Beggar's Canyon, and the next he'd lost the only family he had left, watched his mentor be struck down, and joined the Rebellion with imminent death upon them all.

It was a lot to take in.

_I'm so sorry, Aunt Beru,_ he thought, chest tightening painfully. _Uncle Owen. I should have been there._

Ben had told him that there was a reason he hadn't been, that the Force had drawn him away from the homestead so that he would survive, because it wasn't his time and he still had a purpose to fulfill, but Luke still felt guilty.

Owen and Beru had raised him, loved him in their own ways, and he hadn't even been there the one time they needed him most.

Just like he hadn't been there when Ben needed him.

The moment had replayed itself countless times in his mind since their escape from the Death Star, and it still caused a lump to form in his throat, not just because Ben was dead, but because he knew somehow that he could have stopped it.

But what could he have done, really?

Running up to Darth Vader and shouting 'I'm Luke Skywalker, you killed my father, prepare to die!' was ridiculous, and yet if Ben, a Jedi with decades of experience, could not defeat Vader, what chance did Luke have?

_But I have to try, _he thought, gritting his teeth._ I have to try, not just for Ben, but for my father, as well._

And, he conceded, for himself.

Vader had betrayed and murdered Anakin Skywalker, a fellow Jedi Knight, but the crime he would have to atone for most had little to do with the Force or betrayal, and everything to do with a little boy who'd never had a father there to tell him bedtime stories or work on a speeder with him.

It had been Vader that stole his father away from the son who so desperately needed his love, his guidance, his presence at the center of a little boy's world.

But it had not just been Luke whom Vader had hurt that day.

His mother, her name and face unknown, though he often fancied that he'd seen her in his dreams, hidden behind a delicate mask of ivory that forever concealed her features from him, had also suffered. She had lost her husband, and though he knew very little about her death, Beru had simply told him that she died bringing him into the world, in his heart Luke knew the truth was that Vader had killed her.

By taking away her husband, he had killed her, as well, for she had not had the strength or the will to continue on without the man she loved.

His family had suffered, from one generation to the next, because of the monster in the black armor.

And what of Ben, who had once been teacher and mentor to Vader, who had been betrayed by his own student? Worse yet, to have his own student turn and kill his best friend? The anguish in the old man's eyes, deep and heavy, had not been lost on Luke when Ben spoke of Anakin Skywalker.

The wistfulness in those tired blue-gray eyes, the sad lift of the mouth as memories played in his mind, had touched something deep within Luke.

They must have been like brothers, Ben and Anakin.

And Vader had destroyed them both.

For the second time in his life, Luke had been orphaned. He now had no father, no mother, no uncle or aunt, and not even an aging hermit to guide him down the path that had been set before his feet.

Even Han and Chewie were leaving him, off to roam the galaxy once more.

It was his fate, it seemed, to be alone.

And, as if conjured by the aching loneliness in his chest, as if his heart had cried out and she had heard him, an angel appeared in front of him, stepping away from the Rebellion leaders she was speaking with and coming to his side.

"What's wrong?" Leia asked him worriedly.

There was concern in her dark gaze, warm and unwavering, and it eased some of the throbbing in his chest.

He couldn't explain the strange pull he felt towards the young princess turned senator from Alderaan, but it was a constant that had been there since he first laid eyes on her lovely image in the holomessage that Artoo had been trying to get to Ben.

It was as if he'd known her all his life, long before he'd developed memory or consciousness.

And somehow, he knew that she felt it, too.

"It's Han," Luke answered, discouraged as he shrugged haplessly. "I really thought he'd change his mind and stick around."

"He has to choose his own path," Leia replied with a shake of her head, though he thought he caught a flicker of regret in her eyes, the same regret that he himself was feeling on the matter. "No one can choose it for him."

Luke nodded faintly, knowing she was right.

"I just wish," he murmured, gaze lowering to the floor, his helmet suddenly feeling inexplicably heavy under his arm. "I just wish Ben was here."

_I know._

There were no words spoken, but somehow Luke knew it was what she was thinking.

Just as he knew that she wanted to put her arms around him, hold him tight to give him what comfort she could, but she restrained that impulse, and instead gave him a small, tender smile.

Then she leaned in and kissed him gently on the cheek.

Luke watched her go as she slipped away, returning to her duties.

This wasn't the first time she'd kissed his cheek, it had happened on the Death Star, as well, just before he swung them both across a great canyon in the battlestation, and the warmth had lasted until the end of their escape.

She'd told him that kiss was for luck, but this one hadn't come with a reason.

It wasn't necessary, really.

_I'm here. I care for you. Be careful._

The words had stirred within him, as if they'd been spoken, and as he continued on towards the fighter that had been given to him, a X-wing model, he smiled faintly.

Maybe he wasn't so alone, after all.


	11. Act X

**A Single Thread**

**Part I: A New Hope**

**Act X

* * *

**

A tense silence had fallen over the room.

From her position standing before the flickering display screen showing the planet Yavin and its four moons, Leia watched as a red dot moved closer and closer towards the fourth satellite, even as tiny blips began to cluster around the speck representing the jungle moon of Yavin Four.

The Death Star had just dropped out of hyperspace.

She had felt its approach through the Force, a tickle on the back of her neck, a glimmer of some menace drawing near, but she had been careful not to react until the sensors reported its arrival.

Now, though, she was free to display the anxiety and worry churning within her.

Beside her, General Dodanna was also watching the display screen, jaw clenched and hands clutching the console in front of them, but his fears were for the Rebellion, knowing all depended on this desperate mission.

For Leia, it was much more personal.

Luke was one of those tiny blips, flying an X-wing in the fighter strike against the Death Star.

From the ground, there was nothing that Leia could do to keep him safe, nothing she could do to offer him protection or strength, but there was someone who could.

In the distance, a familiar and powerful shadow burned like a flame in the Force.

_A dark shadow fell over her as she played among the flowers, and she turned her head, blinking up at the towering black form that loomed over her, blocking out the sun. _

Dark eyes widened as they stared up at the malevolent mask.

For a long moment, the demon and the princess stared at one another, equally transfixed, and it seemed to her as if the entire galaxy had suddenly come to a halt, all things standing still and frozen in place and time. Under the dark man's fathomless gaze, a shiver began at the base of her spine, crawling all the way up her back, but she did not look away.

There was something familiar about this scary shadow.

"Princess," the dark man spoke at last, in a low and rumbling voice that did something funny to her stomach. "I have been looking for you."

"You have?" she asked in surprise, forgetting her fear. "No one ever looks for me here."

This was her secret place, her very own little hideaway where she could escape from her handmaidens and play in the gardens without anyone knowing. Not even Papa or Mama knew about it, when Papa's work kept him from playing with her or Mama's tea galas meant she was underfoot, she would sneak away to her secret place because no one could ever find her here.

But this dark man had found her.

He must have special powers, she decided, because no one else could find her when she didn't want to be found.

"You and I have a special connection," the dark man told her. "That is why I was able to find you."

"A special connection?" she echoed.

"Yes," the dark man replied. "A very special connection."

To her surprise he knelt down, lowering himself to her level in one fluid movement, as graceful as one of the tikit cats that would sometimes slink around the gardens. Leia hedged back slightly, and she thought that she saw him wince, but that was silly because he had a mask on so she couldn't see him in the first place.

Still, something about moving away from him had made him sad.

Leia knew what that was like, sometimes people looked at her funny, as if she was something they didn't quite know what to do with. Even Mama and Papa sometimes got that funny look on their faces when she said or did something they thought was strange.

Taking a little breath, she took a brave step closer to the dark man.

"Do you remember your mother, Leia?" the dark man asked her softly, his eyes boring into hers, through the mask and all. "Your real mother?"

Warm wetness fell against her forehead... loving fingers brushed a tuft of hair from her eyes... a weak, shaking voice speaking to her, growing fainter as the words echoed in the most secret corner of her mind...

"She died," Leia announced, although she had no idea how she had come to that conclusion.

"Yes," the dark man agreed, sounding strange, as if he'd eaten his honeycrust too fast and gotten some of it caught in his throat, the way she sometimes did when she forgot to chew slowly like her handmaidens told her to. "She did, but not before she brought you into the world. Her last gift to one who loved her..."

The dark man trailed off, head bowing slightly, and she wondered if his helmet was heavy, because it looked like it was hard to keep his head up with it on.

"Did you..." Leia paused, swallowing hard. "Did you know Mama? My real Mama?"

"I knew her," the dark man replied, and he suddenly seemed very sad, as if it hurt to look at her for too long. "She was very beautiful, you look like her."

"I do?" she asked eagerly.

"Yes," the dark man said. "You're as much of an angel as she was."

One of his gloved hands came up, as if to touch her cheek the way her Papa sometimes did or to brush her hair, but he must have changed his mind for some reason at the last minute because his hand fell back down like it was too heavy to lift again.

"Did you know my Papa?" Leia asked breathlessly, searching his mask hopefully. "My real Papa?"

"I knew him, yes," the dark man answered after a sad pause.

"Mama was sad," Leia divulged quietly, even though she wasn't supposed to talk about her real mother. No one had ever given her that order, at least not that she could remember, but somehow she knew she wasn't supposed to share things she shouldn't know.

But it was okay to tell the dark man, wasn't it?

He missed Mama, the Mama who had to go away, just like she did, so it was okay to tell him.

"Yes," the dark man murmured, and his voice seemed funny, like it was hard to talk. "She was very sad, because she missed your Papa."

"Where did he go?" Leia wondered with a frown.

"He didn't really go anywhere," the dark man replied heavily, sighing the way adults did when they were thinking about things that little princesses weren't supposed to worry about. "He was standing there where he always was, in her doorway, but she couldn't see him there."

"Why not?"

"I do not know the answer to that question, little one."

Leia scrunched up her forehead, trying to find an answer on her own. Sometimes she could do that, and it unsettled Papa because she shouldn't know things she hadn't been told or taught, but she couldn't help it.

"Mama said," she began, then bit her lip.

What was it that her mother had told her? It was important, her mother's last words before she'd been whisked from her arms, and the parting message had lingered in Leia's heart all her life, for four very long years, a source of warmth and comfort in the dark.

"She said that Papa loved us," Leia grasped the distant strand of memory and held it tight. "That he didn't want to go."

"She was right," the dark man whispered, and it seemed to her that he wasn't really speaking to her now, but to himself, or perhaps to her mother, long gone and vanished from his reach. "I never wanted to go."

The words nearly slid past Leia's mind, but something struck her hard in the chest, sinking its hooks into her heart, and that last bit echoed in her head, reverberating from one chord within her to the next. The dark man, for his part, did not seem aware of what he'd just revealed until he felt her incredulous stare.

Dark slits for eyes focused on her once more, and Leia felt transparent, as if he could see through her to her very core.

The dark man did not speak, though, he seemed to be almost waiting, displaying a patience that she somehow knew was not a usual occurrence for him as he watched her silently.

Leia's mind was spinning much too fast for her to keep up, and she suddenly found she wanted to sit down, right there in the middle of the gardens, but her legs weren't responding correctly. The dark man wasn't lying, she knew that the same way she always knew when someone was telling her the truth, it was something her handmaidens called an intuition, whatever that was, but it was never wrong.

But if the dark man wasn't lying, then that meant that...

Before she knew what she was doing, Leia was reaching out a small hand towards the scary mask gazing down at her.

The dark man did not draw back or chastise her, as she half-expected him to do, he merely sat there, deathly still, the deep rumbling of his creepy breathing coming to an unnatural halt as he stared back at her from behind the mask.

It struck Leia then, that he was just as scared as she was.

Feeling suddenly braver, she swallowed and touched her little, trembling fingers to the sleek, sharp angles of the black mask. It was cool to the touch, and sent a chill through her hand, but she didn't pull away, her fingertips dancing over the surface of their own accord, fascinated with every curve and line that made up this strange face the dark man had to wear over his own.

He wasn't scary anymore, he was just lonely.

"I see you," Leia whispered, drinking in his face with her eyes, and with the second sight that she didn't know how to explain. "Mama couldn't see you, but I can."

For a long moment, the dark man stared down at her, and she had the strange feeling that his eyes were wet, which wasn't good, because what if the water filled up his mask on the inside? Unless he could breathe in the water, maybe that's what his mask and suit were for?

"That is all I could hope for, Leia," the dark man said, sounding as if the water inside his mask was strangling him.

Maybe he needed to adjust the controls, there were an awful lot of buttons on his chest- one of them had to do the trick, right?

"Are you gonna go away again?" Leia asked anxiously, and she wondered if she could throw herself onto his legs the way she did with Papa when she didn't want him to go off on 'duty' trips. It never kept him from leaving, Papa always told her that he had to go, but he always promised to come back that way.

"No one can know about us, Leia," the dark man told her evenly. "So you must tell no one, not even Bail Organa. It must be a complete secret, one that we keep to ourselves. Can you do this, Leia?"

She wasn't supposed to keep secrets from Papa- from Papa Bail, that was- but he kept secrets from her. He knew things about her that he wouldn't let her know, and he'd told her that her father was dead.

If he could have secrets, so could she.

Leia nodded seriously.

"I must return to my Master, and you must remain here," the dark man explained, and she looked down. "It is for the best, and you will be safe here. But you will see me often, I will make certain of it. Now that I have found you, Leia, I will not let you go."

"Promise?" Leia demanded tearfully.

The dark man shifted. "You have my word," he rumbled lowly. "I will teach you how to reach me, using our special connection, and you may contact me whenever you wish, once I ensure that my Master is made blind to your Force signature."

Leia frowned, confused by that, and was about to ask what a Force was and why it had a signature, when the dark man suddenly tilted his head, as if listening to something.

Mimicking his movement, Leia strained her ears, but heard nothing.

"Your handmaidens are looking for you," the dark man told her, rising to his full, towering stature once more. "If you do not wish for your secret place to be discovered, Princess, then you should return to the palace."

"Not really a princess," Leia pointed out.

Though the mask concealed his face, she had the strange feeling that the dark man was smiling now, and it was not a very nice smile, but that was okay, because it was directed at something far away, something that she knew was okay to be mean to.

"You are royalty of the Force, Leia," the dark man vowed softly, placing his gloved hands on her small shoulders. "And one day the entire galaxy will be at your feet."

Then he swept away, and Leia watched as her real Papa disappeared into the morning mist that rolled across the gardens.

Closing her eyes, Leia reached out with the Force, sending her presence soaring out across space in search of the grim, shadowy signature that hummed so closely in tune with her own.

Luke would unwittingly put the next step of their plan into motion by destroying the abomination that was the Death Star, with Tarkin and his vile supporters conveniently aboard, eliminating another of the Emperor's powerful weapons and disposing of a handful of opposition at the same time.

In order for Luke to do so, though, Leia needed to ensure that her father was not only off of the battlestation when it happened, but that he was aware of who the Force-strong Rebel pilot destroying the Death Star truly was.

She had to tell her father that he had a son, a son who was flying among the enemy fighters he would soon be facing.

Before it was too late.


End file.
